Ted Cruz to visit border with Glenn Beck

Ted Cruz will visit the crucial border juncture of McAllen, Texas, then appear at an event with Glenn Beck, soaking up the media spotlight as he pushes a hardline plan to crack down on deferred action for some young immigrants.

The freshman Texas senator will tour McAllen’s Customs and Border Patrol facility on Saturday. The complex houses unaccompanied children who have migrated into the United States from Central American countries wracked by drug violence.

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Afterward Cruz will appear with conservative radio host Beck at a church event which will be broadcasted exclusively to subscribers to The Blaze, his media outfit. Beck is visiting the border this weekend to deliver sundries and toys to undocumented immigrants.

Cruz and other Republicans were dinged by the Washington Post on Thursday for criticizing President Barack Obama’s border policies while shying away from a border visit himself in recent weeks. Obama visited Texas last week but avoided the border crossing, opting against “photo ops.”

Cruz says the best way to turn back the influx of children at the borders seeking a “permiso” — or asylum in the United States — is to eliminate any expansion of Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The firebrand Republican will hold a press conference after touring the Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center and receiving a briefing from border officials.

“The staggering conditions that children are being subjected to are a direct result of the amnesty that President Obama illegally and unilaterally enacted in 2012, which caused the number of unaccompanied minors to skyrocket,” Cruz said on Thursday in introducing his bill. “The only way to stop the border crisis is to stop President Obama’s amnesty.”

Cruz’s plan is catching on in some Republican circles, picking up tentative support from two of the top three Senate Republicans, John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota.

Another conservative GOP senator, David Vitter of Louisiana, introduced a separate hardline plan on Friday that would mandate detaining all unaccompanied minors and place those without asylum claims on a plane home within 72 hours of processing. Vitter also blamed Obama’s deferred action policy for sparking the migrant influx.

But not everyone is cheered by Cruz’s attack on DACA, particularly those who have been supportive of comprehensive immigration reform. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a Thursday interview that “it would be incredibly disruptive to try to repeal” DACA now, even though he disagrees with the way Obama implemented a policy that Rubio believes contributed to the border’s inundation with young children.